


Fireweed

by Jackie Thomas (Jackie_Thomas)



Series: Izzy [4]
Category: Lewis (TV)
Genre: Life During Wartime, London Blitz, M/M, World War II
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-20
Updated: 2020-03-20
Packaged: 2021-03-01 03:08:19
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,299
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23228380
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Jackie_Thomas/pseuds/Jackie%20Thomas
Summary: As soon as the all-clear sounds, James leaves the shelter.  He is glad to escape the crowded basement where the pub clientele had decamped at the sound of the air raid warning.  But the air at street level, on this late summer day, is no longer clear or fresh. He has emerged into a world choked with smoke and scorched by fire.  A world familiar to him now.
Relationships: James Hathaway/Robert Lewis
Series: Izzy [4]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/475600
Comments: 30
Kudos: 133





	Fireweed

**Author's Note:**

  * For [divingforstones](https://archiveofourown.org/users/divingforstones/gifts).



> I’ve added this to the Izzy series because he appears but it is not a continuation of the story. This is an AU of an AU! It is set during the London Blitz in WW2. Izzy is a bit younger and James and Robbie aren’t policemen.
> 
> All credit and thanks to Divingforstones for giving me the idea for the fic.

**September 1940**

As soon as the all-clear sounds, James leaves the shelter. He is glad to escape the crowded basement where the pub clientele had decamped at the sound of the air raid warning. But the air at street level, on this late summer day, is no longer clear or fresh. He has emerged into a world choked with smoke and scorched by fire. A world familiar to him now. 

He makes his way toward his lodging house, a handkerchief held over his mouth and nose, and sees the transformation wrought while he was underground. A chunk of the terrace is gone. Eight houses have been destroyed, the one in which he was staying included. Others are still standing but damaged. The destruction, like the swipe of an angry god’s hand, must have been the work of moments. 

The screams and shouts for help bring him to his senses. They propel him into action. He is in uniform. His newly acquired RAF Group Captain insignia on his arm. Four hours later, it is once again, blood stained and filthy with debris. 

The houses yield more bodies than survivors. He holds a woman’s hand while she dies, speaking the words of prayers which have long lost their power. He compresses a wound where a forearm has parted company with its owner. He helps move nine corpses from a caved-in cellar out onto the pavement, children among them. Three families had been sheltering in it when it collapsed from the force of a direct hit and became a tomb. 

Up until now James’ war has been conducted from the air. He flew fifteen missions returning unscathed. On the sixteenth he barely made it back in a fatally damaged aircraft with two dead gunners and a dead wireless operator, the latter’s brains strewn about his uniform. Something he doesn’t allow himself to think about happened the next time he took the Lancaster out. From these missions, he acquired a multiplying stock of horrific images to illustrate his nightmares for years to come so he cannot understand why he does not know what to do with the sights he has seen tonight, why they are immobilising him.

“This way, Captain,” says a warm Northern voice beside him. “We’re all done here.”

It is an older man in ARP Warden uniform. They had worked side by side in the cellar for what seemed like hours before the fire brigade, rescue team and ambulances arrived. And in the house next door to that one, following neighbours’ directions, they discovered together an elderly couple who must have died instantly, probably killed by the force of the blast. 

James finds himself steered to where the Women’s Voluntary Service are serving tea and slices of bread and butter to anyone in need of refreshment. A cup and saucer are put into his hand and the warden goes about his business, apparently unperturbed. James watches him work; directing survivors without a bed for the night to the local school where they will be accommodated, reuniting families and writing his report.

He finds watching the warden keeps his thoughts at bay and eventually he sits down in an armchair salvaged from a destroyed parlour and closes his eyes. He is woken by a hand on his shoulder.

“Up you get, Captain. You can’t sleep here.” It is the ARP warden, looking kindly down on him. “Have you got somewhere to stay tonight?”

He glances back at the pile of rubble that had previously been his lodging house. Fortunately, the house had been empty when the bomb hit. The landlord and lady and their long-term lodger, an elderly gent had been with him in the pub’s shelter and are now billeted with neighbours. They are alive but have lost everything, every stick of furniture, their home. 

James, who prides himself on his ability to retain clarity of thought in the direst of circumstances, has no idea what to do next, isn’t even sure he can reliably place one foot in front of the other. Perhaps the medics were right, despite his protests, to send him on two weeks medical leave. Perhaps he shouldn’t have defied them by going directly to a bed & breakfast on the Blitz bullseye that is the East End of London.

He has his papers and wallet in his breast pocket, he has Will’s photograph in his wallet. He has lost nothing that cannot be replaced, but for some reason he cannot think how he will manage without his two books, an amount of cash, his shaving kit and change of clothes. The only thing to do is take a train back to Upwood as soon as there is one to be had. Although he has essentially been forbidden from doing any such thing.

The warden follows his gaze, “At least you’re in one piece, eh.”

He constructs a rueful smile, “As you say.”

“I can show you the school. I’m walking that way. Somewhere to stay for the night, you’ll think more clearly in the morning.”

He nods and prepares to be shepherded.

They have got no further than the tea urn when a small green blur comes hurtling down the road. It dodges past them and straight into the ruins of one of the houses, tearing frantically at the wreckage.

The warden moves swiftly to pull the blur away, “Come away, it’s not safe.”

“No, let me go! My nan and grandad. They wouldn’t go down the shelter cos of grandad’s knees.”

James snaps out of his daze and easily takes hold of the would-be rescuer, a boy in his early teens, preventing him from diving straight back into the collapsed building.

“Stop it,” he instructs. “They’re not in there. You’ll bring all this down on you like a pack of cards.”

The boy casts about, looking for a familiar face. “Where are they?”

The warden, takes the boy from James, pausing to meet his gaze, to exchange a glance. He has blue eyes, James notices, clear as water, the only things for miles not coated in dirt. The warden lays a hand on the boy’s shoulder and makes sure he has his attention. 

“What’s your name, lad?”

“Isaac Field,” the boy answers promptly. 

“Izzy, isn’t it? The neighbours said you were at work in a hotel in the West End.”

“I’m a page. That’s like a messenger.”

“And your grandma and grandad lived here, did they? Where did they sleep?”

“In the front room, cos of grandad’s knees. He couldn’t do stairs no more.”

“I’m sorry to tell you this, but they didn’t survive.” The warden waits until the boy’s expression tells him he has understood. “They were in bed when the bomb hit. They didn’t have a scratch on them, just looked like they’d fallen asleep. Sometimes it goes like that.”

The boy searches the warden’s expression for signs that what he is hearing isn’t true and, when he fails to find it, his eyes brim with tears.

“I told ‘em to get in the stair cupboard when the sirens go off. I told ‘em.”

He turns away to look at the remains of the house and then stares down at his shoes. The warden still has a hand on his shoulder.

“Where are your mum and dad?”

“They’re dead, I live here.” He looks doubtful of his own claim. “Can I see ‘em?” 

“Not tonight. I’ll take you tomorrow if you’d like me to. Have you got somewhere you can stay tonight? Got any friends?”

“Next door. Only, that’s gone an’ all.”

“Then you and the Captain here can keep each other company in the school hall.”

James nods his assent although he is already having second thoughts about spending the night in a room crammed with frightened civilians.

The three of them start off again, the warden walking with an arm firmly around the boy’s shoulder in a way that sparks a surprising flicker of envy in James.

The walk is not a long one but it soon becomes clear that the bombers hit their mark more than once that night. There are several sites of destruction, and fires are still burning. Many people are out on the street, some dressed in pyjamas and dressing gowns, picking through the wreckage of their homes to see what can be saved.

The school when they get there is at capacity. People have come from all around; some, like James and Izzy, have been bombed out. Others are residents of houses close to likely targets such as the docks, too scared to go home.

They stand at the gate, the three of them not quite crossing the threshold. Izzy, dazed with tears and shock, murmurs, “Do I have to go in? I swore I’d never.”

He is a boy with wild black hair wearing what appears to be a woman’s green, moth eaten velvet coat over a sharp and shiny suit made for a man a foot taller than him. James is not surprised he does not have happy memories of school. 

“Or,” the warden says with a sigh. “My flat isn’t far. I think I can stretch breakfast to three of us.”

**Three months later**

James isn’t sure how he has come to be standing on this Whitechapel doorstep. He caught the train to London in plenty of time for the Oxford connection but, once here, something pulled him off course.

His wound is burning beneath his shirt, his leg aches and he is leaning heavily on his stick. The walk from the underground was almost too much but he stands as straight as he can and does not touch the doorbell until he has composed himself.

He is relieved to find the house still standing. Accustomed now to sudden disappearance and absolute destruction he takes nothing for granted.

The street as a whole seems unscathed, a peaceful oasis among the ruins. Although, of course, despite everything London is not a ruin. It still stands, scarred and battered, but alive and, if called upon, kicking. He has a fellow feeling with it, in a way he never could with still pristine Oxford. Perhaps that is why he is here.

He rings the doorbell of the ground floor flat and soon hears footsteps. Not the warden’s measured pace but the fleeter foot of a barefoot Izzy. The boy beams in pleased surprise at him.

“We didn’t know you was coming! Captain Hathaway’s here!” 

He waits. He has no invitation and no reason to believe he has the right to turn up unannounced. The warden, whose name is Robbie Lewis, appears in the doorway of his bedroom, his uniform half buttoned. The warmth of his smile leaves James in no doubt of his welcome. He returns it gratefully.

“What have you done to yourself, now?” Robbie asks after coming to the door to bring James in and close it behind him. “We worried when we didn’t hear from you.”

“How are you, Robbie?” James asks.

“Better than you, by the looks of it. Izzy, that’s three plates for dinner.” 

“The soup!” Izzy shouts, shooting off in the direction of the kitchen.

“In you go,” Robbie says pointing James into the living room. “Watch your step, there’s a cat out to kill us all.”

“Are you sure, Robbie? I can still catch a train to Oxford.”

“Don’t talk daft. It’s good to see you, man.”

It is almost sunset; the time when the ARP wardens start their rounds, making sure ‘lights out’ is being observed on their patch and all is in place and ready should the bombs start falling.

Izzy comes in carefully holding a bowl of soup in two hands, sets it down on the table and disappears to get the next one.

“Izzy’s still with you? I thought you were going to arrange for him to be evacuated to your cousin.”

“He wouldn’t go, the horror,” Robbie says. “But he’s a good lad and I’ve got the space.”

Robbie is a widower. He lost his wife five years ago. There is a daughter who is a nurse somewhere in North Africa and a son serving in the navy. 

“Have you parted company with the air force, Captain?” Robbie asks.

It feels strange to be out of uniform, to be back in a suit and tie, answering to the rank of Mister, pension and ration books his only weapons.

“Medical discharge,” James says. “I can’t fly a plane anymore. I can’t do much of anything.”

“You’ve done your bit, I’d say,” Robbie says.

“That appears to be the consensus of opinion.”

_No use to anyone in your state, Hathaway. Hop it now, don’t make a fuss._

“There’s plenty for you to do here on earth,” Robbie tells him. “That big brain of yours can be put to use somewhere. There’s more than one way to win a war.”

He likes that idea better than the endless advice to endlessly rest and recuperate. 

Izzy has set the table with hardly a drop spilt. The recipe, which could appear anywhere on the soup to stew spectrum, is very much Robbie’s signature dish. Any available cut of meat with whatever vegetables there are to be had, in any combination with rice or barley or potatoes. It returns to the table until it is time to make another batch.

“He made me give up my job,” Izzy announces in response to James’ enquiry.

“Thirteen-year olds aren’t allowed to work,” Robbie says with an air of continuing a well-rehearsed argument.

“They didn’t know I was thirteen though, did they?” 

“And that hotel you were so fond of is a hole in the ground now.”

“It ain’t, half of its still there.”

“Those places are sitting targets for the bombers. You were putting yourself in danger, just so some rich people could eat steak and drink champagne while the rest of us make do. Anyway, now James is here you can carry on with your schooling.”

And just like that, he’s staying.

“Only don’t teach him any new languages, Hathaway, for the love of God. The jibber jabber with one is enough.”

Izzy grins around his bread and butter, “He’s always saying stuff like that; he don’t mean it.”

“Oh, don’t I?”

“He said we couldn’t keep Ramsay MacDonald, but he loves her.”

“The bugger had my vegetable patch up today.”

James attempts to formulate a question.

“Ramsay MacDonald is the cat,” Robbie explains.

“I’ll get her, she’s shy.” Izzy dives out into the hallway and returns with an armful of fat, cross tabby. “She’s named after the first Labour prime minister.”

“And likely the last,” Robbie adds. “The useless bloody -.”

“But we didn’t have to take him in, cos he’s dead.”

James frowns, “I used to have metaphysics classes like this at Cambridge.”

“It’s perfectly simple, James. Our neighbour asked him to look after her giant, carnivorous animal until she comes back from her sister’s in Eastbourne. Which she was quite clear wasn’t going to be until after the war ends, if it ever ends. As a result, we’re starving in our beds. Look at the size of it. It’s eating us out of house and home.”

“She don’t eat all that much. She’s mostly fluff.”

“Ramsay MacDonald is female?” James asks. “I had no idea.”

“She didn’t let on until she had kittens,” Izzy informs him.

“When did we last see a Cat’s Meat Man round here?” Robbie demands of the universe. “We have to get fish heads and so forth and boil them, because that’s all we flaming need. And she’s deaf, James. You’ll need that information when this child is risking his life to find her during an air raid.”

“But she don’t mind the raids, cos she can’t hear ‘em. The other cats run away screaming.”

“And as I’ve explained many times –“

“Running away is good,” Izzy intones.

After dinner, Robbie prepares to leave for work with Izzy in tow. The boy quite obviously needs to make sure the man keeps safe while on duty, although this is not articulated.

“I’ve acquired an apprentice,” Robbie says. “But he’s on notice.” 

“I have to do what I’m told,” Izzy explains grudgingly, slinging an unexpectedly zebra-striped gas mask box over his shoulder. “Or I ain’t allowed to come out.”

“You have to do what?” Robbie asks.

“ _Eggs-ackly_ what I’m told.”

“And what specifically aren’t you supposed to do.”

“It was silk!”

“Isaac…”

“I ain’t supposed to go and get a waistcoat even if its silk and the shop’s about to fall down and ruin it.”

Both of them look to James for adjudication.

“I can see both sides of the argument,” he says gravely.

“Oh, you’re no help,” Robbie says and Izzy is overjoyed at his unexpected victory. 

“Come on if you’re coming,” Robbie says. “James, don’t wait up.”

“I’ll move me stuff?” Izzy offers instantly.

Last time they were all here together James took the second bedroom while Izzy made do with blankets on the floor. The spare room is now Izzy’s domain and James is reluctant to disrupt the twice-orphaned boy’s much needed sense of stability. Robbie seems to agree but James cannot sleep on the floor.

“You can come in with me,” Robbie says. “I’ve got a double and I’m out most nights. That’s if you can persuade Ramsay MacDonald to make room for you.”

James is ashamed he had not considered this; that he had not anticipated the disruption his presence would cause. But Robbie seems unconcerned, simply unconditionally pleased to have him around again.

He squeezes his shoulder. “Get some sleep, we won’t be back for a while.”

It is a good idea in theory and he is so exhausted after the journey he feels he might overcome his insomnia and close his eyes for a time. But after going through the laborious process of undressing he lies awake and lies awake, dozes off, plummets to earth in a burning sardine tin, lies awake and lies awake. It is a relief to hear a key in the door and Robbie and Izzy returning.

It has been a quiet night although the blackout had caused an accident between a car and a cyclist. They had been on-hand to administer first aid. Robbie is pleased with Izzy who helped save a life while obeying the unnegotiable rules.

While they wash and change, James decants some unspecified brown stuff into Ramsay MacDonald’s bowl and makes breakfast. There is less food in the pantry than before; no jam or marmalade, a couple of ounces of butter. He scrambles the two eggs and fries the single thin rasher of bacon, dividing them between Robbie and Izzy and making toast and fresh tea for all them. He knows his way around the kitchen from last time, but everything takes so much longer. He wonders if it will always be this way, if even the simplest tasks will forever be hard labour.

He reads while Robbie and Izzy sleep and then the three of them combine their rations to construct the latest batch of soup.   


**23 January 1941**

James’ first days in the city are discontented ones; his injuries preventing either activity or rest. His nights are no better; beset by a grim rotation of insomnia and terrifying dreams.

Robbie introduces him to a neighbour who works in the War Office. Within a week he is in Whitehall in a room full of maps and charts directing the war with pipe-smoking men too old or infirm to see action. The work is what he needs. He is contributing again and he can at least argue for the lives of civilians, which he never could when he was the one under orders to bombard them.

The war seems more present on the streets of London than at RAF Upwood. The signs and structures of civil defence, the barrage balloons floating overhead, the sirens sounding nearly every night. And after each visit from the Luftwaffe, some new and fateful demolition remakes the landscape.  
  
There is an Anderson shelter in Robbie’s garden and James often finds himself there when darkness falls. He is usually alone with Ramsay MacDonald. Robbie and Izzy are about their duties and the upstairs neighbours, unnerved by the bombings, stay with relatives outside the city when they can. With a single candle burning, the drum beat of the Blitz in the background and a cat, serene in her deafness curled up beside him, he is conscious of his body and mind taking the first steps toward healing.

Sleep begins to come too but this remains a mixed blessing. It brings rest and temporary oblivion but also its own horrors. Robbie is yet to take a night off and James aims to be up before he and Izzy return, to make breakfast and to leave the man to his own bed. This way his haunted dreams remain his own business.

This goal gradually becomes more difficult to achieve. More frequently now, he wakes with Robbie snoring quietly beside him. One morning he finds himself shaken awake. The deeper the sleep, the stranger the dream. Will is plummeting through the air losing limbs faster than James, following behind, can gather them up. It goes on until Will looks up at him and says, in Robbie’s voice, ‘wake up, it’s only a dream’.

Robbie is leaning over him, dazed with sleep, bringing him back to consciousness. He knows he has been shouting because his throat is hoarse. Embarrassed, he mumbles apologies and gets up as fast as his broken body will allow. 

**~**

James has washed, shaved and dressed and is in the kitchen drinking a cup of tea when Robbie finds him. He has smoked a precious cigarette and watched the sunrise through the kitchen window on this clear winter day, but is still caught in the slipstream of the dream.

“All right, bonny lad?” Robbie asks.

“Yes,” he replies. “Thank you. You should get some sleep.”

Robbie stands next to him instead, and they watch through the window, two darting grey tits braving the January chill together. 

“Did I ever tell you I was at Verdun?” Robbie asks.

“I knew you were in the Great War.”

He mentions it sometimes, but only in code. _‘When I was in France, when I was in the army.’_

“In the trenches. A corporal once all the corporals ahead of me were dead. After six months I gave up believing any other kind of existence was possible. When I came back home, it was almost as though I was proved right because every time I closed my eyes, where did I find myself? Right back in that filth; sick and terrified, my pals dying in front of my eyes.”

It is hard to think of Robbie Lewis; calm, curious, brave, full of warmth and humour as one of those shell-shocked men he sees even now, wandering the streets, dazed and maimed. They are oblivious to the new nightmare the world is busy manufacturing without them but Robbie is still fighting.

“How did you get through it? How did you make it stop?”

“Stop? No, it’s never really done that, but it gets better, the memories fade. And I learnt to keep the whole thing somewhere it couldn’t do much harm. I had my wife you see, and the children. People to remind me who I really was. That I had survived.”

Does Robbie know how alone he is, how little use he can make of this advice? 

“Correct me if I’m wrong,” Robbie goes on, as if he has heard James’ thoughts. “But I’ve got the impression you don’t have much to do with your own family. So what I’m telling you, is that I’m here and Izzy’s here. You have a home, even if it’s a bit of a daft one. Between the two of us we can keep reminding you.”

Robbie begins an apparently casual investigation of the contents of the teapot, but James is not fooled into thinking he has received anything less than an offer of a family. A sob rises up, quickly suppressed.

“I’m late,” he says. “I’d better go.”

“Aye, off you go. See you tonight?”

In the tumult of the night he has forgotten it is a red-letter day.

“Of course. I’ll be there by six.”

**~**

At five thirty that evening, he leaves the war in the hands of the pipe-smoking men to walk the short distance from Whitehall to the Strand.

The Lyons Cornerhouse is already crowded but Izzy immediately appears out of the crush, ready to tell him in detail about the American gangster movie he and Robbie have seen this afternoon while taking him by the arm to their table. 

“Many happy returns, Izzy,” he says when the boy pauses for breath.

“Thanks, Captain Hathaway. Are you going to have cake? Robbie says we can choose.”

Robbie is sitting contentedly with a pot of tea. He has put on a dark blue suit and an unusually colourful tie for his day out. Both, no doubt, selected by Izzy who has also located an extravagant tie and a waistcoat for himself. This waistcoat is not silk but, according to Robbie, liable to breach the blackout anyway. 

“Evening James,” Robbie says pulling out one of the chairs to make it easier for him to sit. 

They order a meal of something which in no way resembles soup, followed by a different cake each. Robbie and James claim the first course has filled them up and Izzy is entreated to finish the apple tart and creamy layer cake in order not to offend the waitress. He obliges.

Over dinner and then coffee, James listens to an account of the day, including a dispute over the quality of the film, which Robbie predictably found less enthralling than Izzy did. 

“What’s an Ida Lupino, anyway? It sounds like a form of contagion.”

“You loved her,” Izzy challenges before breaking into a dramatic enactment of one of the scenes, playing all the parts while Robbie, with much eye-rolling and tutting, corrects him when he goes wrong.

These are the people James has been invited to consider family, and he already feels more at home with them than he ever did with the one he was born into. But it is to be a short-lived invitation. He knows it is time to be honest, at least with Robbie, and to face the consequences.

They present Izzy with a gift of an appointment at a Whitechapel tailor known to Robbie, to get a suit of his choice made. They have combined their savings to pay for it. Izzy’s jaw drops when he sees what he has.

“I ain’t never had a new suit,” he says. “Ain’t it too expensive? I was happy with the pictures and tea for my present.”

“You deserve it, lad,” Robbie says. “You get something you like and we’ll be happy.”

They take the bus back and are home as the sirens start. They spend the hours of the raid in the Anderson listening to planes flying overhead. Robbie has a surprising stock of parlour games to pass the time and Izzy is a passionate player of whatever word, memory or storytelling challenge is on offer. 

Izzy says, “Thanks Robbie, thanks Captain Hathaway. I never had a better birthday.”

There is a note of sadness in his voice which Robbie hears, “It would have been better if your grandparents had been here though, wouldn’t it?”

“That would have been good. Nan always used to make a cake with icing on my birthday,” he says. “I still keep thinking they’re going to turn up one day but they ain’t.”

“’ _The life of the dead is set in the memory of the living_.’” James murmurs. He thinks the same about Will.

When the all-clear sounds they find the neighbourhood has been spared for one more night and they make their way back inside.

**~**

James settles himself into one of the armchairs in the living room with a book. Robbie is in his pyjamas and dressing gown when he comes to find him later.

“Not coming to bed?” Robbie asks.

“Not just yet.”

“You’re in pain again? We did too much walking today.”

“Not at all. I just don’t sleep much these days.”

“And I can’t seem to sleep at night anymore.”

Robbie goes to the dresser, retrieving from it a bottle of brandy and two glasses. He pours them each a good measure and takes the second armchair. They tap their glasses and, for a time, while they sip the sweet bitter liquid, neither speak. Ramsay MacDonald makes herself comfortable on Robbie’s lap and the mantelpiece clock sounds the third hour.

“So,” Robbie says eventually. “I said something this morning that’s been bothering you. Is that right? I was hoping my little speech would have had the opposite effect.”

James uses his stick to help himself stand. It is true, he has walked too far today but that ache is hardly noticeable beside a new, deeper pain. He goes to the door and closes it, partly to give himself a chance to prepare, partly to prevent famously big-eared Izzy from overhearing. Robbie watches him and seems relieved when he returns to the armchair.

“You made a generous offer this morning,” James begins. “I didn’t trust myself to reply but I was - I _am_ , grateful.”

“I’m not after gratitude James, family works both ways.”

“I know, I understand that. That’s why I can’t accept.”

“I’m sorry to hear it.”

“Not because I don’t want to. Robbie, I’m not who you think I am.”

“All right,” Robbie says. “Who are you?” 

“I wish there were a simple answer to that question. Before I met you, back in the summer, I lost a friend.” He pauses, he never imagined admitting this to anyone. “He was a navigator, part of my crew.”

“This was Will?” Robbie asks.

“How did you -?”

“You’ve said his name.”

“Oh, then perhaps you already know.” Robbie’s gaze is unwavering. “I think I’ve not been right since he died. I don’t know why, but I can’t -. But that’s not what I wanted to tell you.”

“Go on, James.” 

Robbie is speaking gently, as if he were addressing one of his unexploded bombs; likely to do something distressing if not handled with the utmost caution.

“Will was more than a friend to me. I loved him we – we were -lovers.”

Robbie takes a sip of his drink, “I see,” he says.

James sees a warm flush coming to his cheeks. The man has quickly come to represent decency and kindness in James’ mind. If he calls him pansy and banishes him from the house, it is possible James will never recover. But Victoria was on the throne when Robert Lewis was born and contempt would be nothing more than the correct response 

“Do you have a picture of Will?” Robbie asks unexpectedly.

James takes a small portrait photograph from the lining of his wallet. Will looks respectable in the picture. In a civilian suit, unruly curls combed and creamed flat; a man you might find doing your accounts or teaching mathematics to your children. But James likes it for the devilish twinkle in the eye for the slight quirk of his lip, for the hints of the true Will beneath the surface. Robbie looks at the picture carefully before handing it back.

“I’m truly sorry, James,” he says. To have his loss acknowledged is overwhelming and he cannot reply to thank him. “Tell me, is this war or is it you?”

He understands what he is being asked. Is this like public school or a ship at sea? Men together without women, where the normal rules do not apply. Or is it a permanent sinful nature, an imbalance of humours, a weakness in the blood. The pedant in him wants to argue against the classification of the human soul but there is only one truthful answer.

“It’s me, not war.”

“It’s courageous of you to say so.”

Courageous? He is degenerate, criminal, diseased. He shouldn’t even have been trusted with the war, his medals were dishonestly obtained. Courageous?

“I hope you don’t think I was trying to mislead you by sharing your bed.” He says.

“I don’t think anything of the kind.”

“As far as I’m concerned that part of me died when Will died.”

“You’ve suffered a great loss. I think I’ve always known that.”

“I can move out today, I understand you wouldn’t want-”

“James, stop. I’ve already told you; this is your home if you want it to be and this changes nothing. And what’s more, I’m satisfied with our current sleeping arrangements.”

“How can you be?” James asks, hearing the self-disgust in his own voice.

“You’re the same man whose been sharing my quarters for weeks,” Robbie says. “You are the man I thought you were. If you’re uncomfortable with it, Izzy won’t mind shifting to the living room floor. You could stand that boy in the broom cupboard and he’d get his eight hours.” 

“I won’t do that, but I don’t think I can keep sharing with you, with you knowing. Its best if I move, isn’t it? Be honest, Robbie.”

But Robbie is finished with talking. He tips the cat off his lap, swallows the last of his drink and stands up.

“James, its late. You’ve got to get up for work in a few hours. Let’s get some sleep.” Then when James continues to hesitate, he rests his hand on his shoulder, “Up you get, Captain,” he says. “You can’t sleep here.”

  
**The night of 10th May 1941**

No more is said, although perhaps it should have been, and the months that follow are governed by wartime imperatives. Robbie’s work, James’ work, the grim routines and terrors of the raids, the tedium of privation and shortages, the growing list of rationed items. The war is so much woven into the fabric of each day that James gives up thinking of it as a temporary state of affairs, can’t imagine a time when he won’t have to wonder each morning, if today will be the day the country falls. 

Within the strangeness of this normal, he takes comfort in the peace of their home, which he does, oddly, start to think of as home. He has his gramophone player and some records sent down from Oxford and the house is suddenly full of Glenn Miller and Tommy Dorsey. He makes himself popular by introducing variations to the soup diet using the small stock of frugal recipes he learnt from his mother’s cook. A pie made with vegetables on a day when there is no meat or fish to be had, a carrot cake for Izzy. He becomes accustomed to Robbie’s solid presence in the bed beside him and occasionally catches himself being happy.

**~**

One Saturday in May, James works late and is in the office when, for the first time in several days, the sirens sound. It is not a normal air raid; the planes keep coming and the bombing is relentless for nearly seven hours. The West End is the target and he spends the night watching from a top floor window as central London catches fire. He wants to be out in the thick of it, saving lives, but knows he would only be a hindrance. 

A short walk from the War Office after all-clear, the House of Commons and Westminster Abbey both burn. It makes him wonder what has survived of the city’s heart.

His neighbour, now a colleague, finds him to tell him Whitechapel has also been badly hit. They borrow a ministry car and drive back through devastated streets.

That Robbie’s house has escaped does not alleviate James’ sense of foreboding. The houses opposite have been destroyed. One has bodies lined up outside, all interred in body bags. Another has an upstairs bedroom on display as if it were an open dollhouse. He is speaking to neighbours, preparing to offer help and shelter when he hears his name shouted and sees Izzy tearing down the street toward him.

When he turned fourteen, Izzy joined the Boys Brigade and is wearing their uniform. He now has a semi-official role running messages for the ARP Wardens, Robbie in particular. He is known for his hard work and courage, so his refusal to cut his hair or wear the uniform without embellishment has, so far, been overlooked. As has his mysterious inability to _about turn or present arms_ on command. Now he is crying.

James clasps him by the shoulders, “Where’s Robbie?” 

“He’s dead,” Izzy chokes.

“No,” he barks back.

“A house collapsed. He’s still stuck under it.”

“Show me.”

The neighbour has disappeared with the car, so Izzy turns and runs. James struggles after him.

“There was a bloke what was trapped in his house,” Izzy says, moderating his pace when James lags behind. “He was shouting cos he had glass stuck in his side and Robbie went in for him. He sent me to get help but when I was at the end of the road I saw the house come down. I tried to get the fire brigade and that lot, but everything’s going berserk, there was a million bombs last night.”

It takes ten long minutes, struggling against the screaming pain in his leg, to get to the street, which has survived intact apart from a row of three houses. The two-storey house that Izzy points out has almost completely collapsed. Much of it has cascaded into the back garden but there is a weight of rubble toward the front where Robbie went in. The residents of the neighbouring houses are out on the street but there is still no sign of civil defence.   
  
“Help me,” he says to Izzy. 

The two of them, with an agonising slowness, move broken bricks and mortar, crumbled plaster, wood and glass aside. They take care, as far as they can, not to cause further landslides. No one could have survived this, says a traitorous voice in James’ head. 

There is a hand. 

A hand. Still and cool. A blue cuff of a warden’s uniform. The rest of the body deep under the rubble.

The hand moves.

No more than a slight twitch but a definite movement.

“Get help!” James shouts. “Tell them there are people trapped alive, tell them anything, make them come.”

Izzy scrambles away and, alone now, James excavates even more carefully, working his way toward Robbie’s head.

“Stay with me, Robbie,” he says, keeping up a steady flow of encouraging words. “Stay with me. I’ll be with you soon.”

Neighbours start to gather, silencing anyone passing who makes a noise. Another warden arrives, sent by Izzy. She kneels to help James. Finally, they reach Robbie. His helmet has slipped forward and protected his face. There must also have been an air pocket because when they remove the helmet, Robbie opens his eyes. When he speaks his voice is rough and parched.

“James?” 

“There you are,” James says gently. “What have you done to yourself now?” 

Robbie indicates further inside the house, “There’s a wounded man back there.”

James and the warden start work again, to free Robbie and get to the other man. A neighbour brings a cup of water and James gives him a small sip.

“Help me up,” Robbie says when they have cleared space around him and shifted everything covering him. 

“You shouldn’t move until the medics have taken a look at you,” James tells him.

Robbie struggles up anyway, “I’ve already had this building fall on me once. As much fun as that was, I don’t care for a repeat performance.”

James and the neighbour support Robbie to stand, James struggling with his stick and his own injury. They move to the other side of the road and settle him back down. Robbie leans back against James and takes long gasps of sulphurous air.

“Do you think anything’s broken, have you got any pain?” 

Robbie had stood almost by himself, he seems oriented, his legs have carried his weight, he is using his arms and hands normally. Perhaps he is all right, perhaps a miracle.

“Nothing a hot bath and a drop of brandy won’t put right,” Robbie says. “Where’s Izzy?”

“Gone to get help.”

“The house?”

“Still standing.”

Words spill out beyond his control, with an urgency he hardly knows he is feeling.

“Don’t ever leave me, Robbie, I couldn’t stand this world without you.”

Falling in love has happened so quietly, he had no notion of it.

“I’ll do my best, bonny lad,” Robbie says. “I promise, I’ll do my best.”

Finally, a rescue team arrives followed by an ambulance with Izzy hanging on to the back. The driver asks dryly, “We got Neville Chamberlain’s nephew here?” 

James raises a hand, “Yep!”

Izzy rejects any notion of potential internal injury and flings himself at Robbie. 

“All right, lad,” Robbie says putting a hand on his head to comfort him. 

The rescue team take over working on the house, finding the trapped man, unbelievably, also alive. He has serious injuries and is taken away on a stretcher. A medic examines Robbie and judges him fit to go home. He doesn’t even have a headache, which is more than can be said for James.

**~**

When they reach home, they find that the electricity and gas supplies have failed and the house is in darkness. Robbie rests in an armchair while James lights candles and pours him the drink he wants. And one for himself too. Izzy builds a fire in the living room with what coal they have. They have a primus stove so they can boil a kettle for tea on nights such as this but it takes a lot longer to fill the bath to a useful level. 

James, conscious of his earlier declaration, asks Robbie if he needs any help. Robbie grips James’ arm to help himself stand.

“See me in and out please, James. I can manage the rest.”

The flat has a bathroom which Robbie fitted a couple of years before the war when he retired from the Metropolitan police, and is particularly proud of. He sits down on the side of the bath and closes his eyes. 

“Robbie?”

“I’m all right, James, it’s sinking in, that’s all. Help me will you.”

James sees what is being asked of him. He is amazed he is trusted. He removes Robbie’s belt and unbuttons the overalls which form, with a shirt and tie, the ARP uniform. 

“Were you conscious?” James asks while undoing the tie.

“Mostly. I thought I’d had it, to be honest. But I was quite calm when I realised there was nothing I could do; making my peace, taking stock. Mind, that was probably the lack of oxygen.”

James helps Robbie out of his shirt. They share a room so they are not strangers to each other, but he has never seen him like this. He had expected scars, he had expected to see evidence of the ravages of two wars and the turbulent times in between, but these too, Robbie seems to have conquered.

Robbie stops James in his work by taking hold of his hands and turning them palm up. James notices only then that they are cut and raw. Perhaps his excavations had not been as calm and methodical as he imagined.

Robbie looks appalled, “You get yourself cleaned up and make sure Izzy’s all right too. What I’ve put you both through.”

Neither move for whole seconds until Robbie lifts one of James’ hands to his lips and kisses it. Then he lifts the other and does the same.

“Thank you, for saving my life.”

Robbie’s hand goes then to James’ face, touching with the tips of his fingers a graze on his cheekbone, and to the back of his head to bring it to the level of his own. James realises he is about to be kissed and, if this is not a dream, it will ruin everything.

“Robbie, don’t.” The older man stills. “You’re in shock, you’re not thinking clearly.”

Robbie withdraws from him, struggling up, “I’ll be fine from here, you can go,” he says.

James stands back too, “Of course.” 

**~**

He finds Izzy sitting cross-legged in front of the embers of the coal fire with Ramsay MacDonald, sprawled supine across him. He is in a pair of Robbie’s pyjamas and an old red cardigan which had once belonged to Robbie’s daughter. James pours himself another drink to still his shaking hands. The resurgent pain in his leg means the process of sitting down, should it be achieved, would not easily be reversed so he remains standing.

“Is he all right?” Izzy asks.

“Seems to be, are you?”

“Yeah.”

“Are you sure?”

“I suppose. Did you see, in the middle of the night, the sky was bright orange?”

“I saw it.”

“And them across the road got hit. Some of ‘em are dead.”

“I know, Iz.”

“They want to smash us up good, don’t they?”

He buries his head briefly in the fur of the cat’s belly and she swipes gently at him.

“They won’t win. Not when we’ve got people who can get up and walk away after a house falls in on them.”

“Captain Hathaway, how did you know he was alive? I thought -, it was like Nan and Grandad, I thought he’d definitely gone. I left him to die.”

“You went and got help, you did what you were supposed to do.” He looks unconvinced. “You saved his life. I wouldn’t say it if it wasn’t true.”

“He’d still be under there if it was down to me. I wish this would be finished.”

“Listen to me,” James says watching the boy fighting back tears. “You don’t have to stay in London if you’ve had enough. Robbie found somewhere for you to go and you ought to take him up on it. There would be no shame in it; you’ve seen more war than most soldiers. You did save him tonight, but he would rather you were safe.”

“I ain’t going,” Izzy declares stubbornly. “This is London, this is my place, and they ain’t having it.”

James wishes he had half of the boy’s nerve these days. “London’s lucky to have you defending her. And Izzy, if something had happened to Robbie. You wouldn’t have been on your own. I hope you know that.

“Thanks Captain Hathaway.”

“I meant to ask, by the way; Neville Chamberlain’s nephew?”

He finally breaks into a smile, “You said, say anything. I reckon it wasn’t a lie. Grandad used to say all posh people are related.”

“Did he now?”

“Cos of _inbreathing_.”

“Inbreathing. I’ll have to ask my father about that.” 

They are living in a tiny, defenceless city on a solitary island with the darkness closing in. Without people to remind you who you are, you are lost. He swallows the last drop of brandy and goes to see Robbie out of the bath. 

  
**A week later**

Robbie is back on duty two days later as if nothing had happened; running civil defence classes at the wardens’ sector office and working his patch at night. James too ignores the complaints from his various injuries and goes back to work on Monday. 

He finds ruined buildings at every turn, journeys disrupted by bomb craters, the café he sometimes takes lunch in, now a hole in the ground. He sees people walking to work in tears.

From Whitechapel to Westminster, there is a grey, ashy dust over every surface. If the windows and doors are left open, it gets inside. It works its way into lungs and eyes and ears. 

The weariness and sadness about the city infects his mood. Even if there is no more bombing, and assuming there is a future to look forward to, rebuilding and recovery will take years.  
  
And things are different between James and Robbie too. There is a new distance between them. James cannot understand why Robbie did what he did but it is clear he now regrets it. Does he think he was somehow tricked? James has always been careful in his conduct and, until that fateful night, he is sure his behaviour toward Robbie had been irreproachable. He has had a lifetime to learn to police himself, to direct his thoughts and emotions inward, to project to the world a perfect picture of a correct and proper Englishman with no twist in his soul. 

The first time they are alone is on Sunday afternoon. After lunch Izzy reluctantly goes off to ‘march about’ with the Boys Brigade. He sticks one of Robbie’s daffodils into his uniform lapel before he leaves, ‘to wind up the Staff Sergeant’.

Robbie comes in from working in the garden. He has been trying to coax the vegetable patch back to life after the wind covered it in a powdered layer of someone’s house. He turns on the wireless where classical music is playing and sits at the dining table scratching Ramsay MacDonald’s ears. The cat leaps on to his lap and gazes adoringly at him. 

James makes a pot of tea and brings it to the table. They exchange no words while the tea brews and he pours two cups.

“If you want me to move out,” James says finally. “I understand.” 

“Is that what you want?”

“I don’t want things to be difficult for you. Between us. And it feels like they are.”

“Give me a chance, will you,” Robbie says with such heat that the cat startles and leaps to the floor. “No one likes to be rejected.”

James stares at him, “You -, you weren’t _rejected_. You’re not -, you’re not like me.”

Robbie clasps his hands together, “How do you know that? How do I know?”

“I don’t understand.”

“Tell me, can you. Because it’s getting harder to be around you and not touch you or tell you I love you.”

James waits for the world to start making sense again. It never quite does.

“Believe me, James,” Robbie says. “No offence to you, but I’ve been fighting this for weeks. I’ve been trying to convince myself I’m imagining things, that this is all, somehow, because of what you told me about yourself. The precious thing you trusted me with. But when you’re lying under six foot of rubble, looking death in the eye, your thoughts have a way of clarifying themselves.”

“You had oxygen starvation, remember.”

Robbie reaches across and takes James’ hand.

“And you brought me fresh air. No James, I’ve never thought so clearly. I thought about the things I would regret by going early. Not seeing Lyn and Mark safely back from the war or Izzy settled. Never knowing a grandchild. And not ever having had you in my arms. You were right to stop me before, but do I seem incoherent to you, now? Do I seem to be in shock?”

“No, Robbie, not at all.”

“Then would it be all right if I kissed you now?”

“Yes,” James says. “That would be all right.” 

  
**September 1941**

On the anniversary of his grandparents’ death, Robbie and James go by bus with Izzy to the cemetery where they are buried. There has been heavy rain overnight and the path they follow is slick with mud. It is a new path, made over the course of a year by the flat-footed tread of undertakers and by mourners following in their wake. James stops for a moment to steady himself on the awkward terrain.

Nan and Grandad share a communal grave with other Blitz dead. Izzy says they would not have minded; it is the East End way. James thinks of the windy Lincolnshire churchyard Will rests in. He would have preferred it here, amid the clatter of city life.

There have been few air raids since that night in May. German attention has swerved east and it is the turn of other cities in far off places to glow with terrible light. Robbie is mistrustful of this quiet interlude and James knows from his work how justified his mistrust is. Britain is alone and hanging by a thread. If America does not join the war, the country is unlikely to withstand invasion. 

But in the pause, life takes on a semblance of normality. Izzy, now old enough, has a new job working at the Strand Cornerhouse three evenings a week, running errands and clearing tables. Robbie continues to defend his corner of Whitechapel but even he starts to come home earlier and can be persuaded to take the occasional night off. On condition James agrees to do the same. 

On these nights, they find shelter in one another. In the blackout, in the silence of this brittle peace.

The communal grave is unfinished; still covered in patchy grass and marked with painted signs. Izzy has brought roses from Robbie’s garden and he lays them on the earth with those already there. People must have been coming throughout the morning to mark the anniversary.

Among the market stall bouquets someone has left a bundle of Rosebay Willowherb; the wildflower that has been colonising the bomb sites, blanketing the ruins in drifts of pale magenta.

“That stuff used to grow in no man’s land,” Robbie says. “We called it Fireweed.”

“It likes land that’s been burnt,” James says. “You often find it growing on battlegrounds.”

“Aye and here it is; followed me home,” he gazes down at it. “I never minded it though. It was something beautiful out of all that horror.”

Izzy has walked the edge of the grave and comes back in time to hear the end of the conversation. He is wearing his new suit, a dashing blue pinstripe. 

“I’m glad I followed you home, Robbie. Me and Ramsay MacDonald. We don’t know what we would’ve done without you.”

“It’s been a pleasure to have you, lad,” Robbie tells him.

The living might imagine they are different from the dead; that they are free to go where they please. But most are only buffeted along on the breeze. Fireweed seeds, taking root where chance drops them.

London has absorbed the flames, breathed the fire, fertilised her soil from the ashes. She holds her children in a firm embrace; whether she has birthed them or adopted them. She is a calling voice, a candle burning through the night and in these darkest of hours she bends her knee to no foe.

“We can go back now,” Izzy says. “Thanks for coming with me.”

Robbie takes James’ arm as they walk back on the more perilous downward slope. They do not usually touch unless they are alone but Robbie ignores James’ warning glance

“You don’t want to lose your footing in this mud,” he says.

“Robbie, I’m glad I followed you home too.”

“Daft bugger.”

**~**

“Would you agree,” Robbie says as they reach the road and find themselves outside a pub. “That the sun’s over the yardarm?”

Izzy blinks up at the sky which is barrage balloon grey and looks around for something that might be whatever a yardarm is.

“It ain’t,” he concludes.

“It’s an expression.” James says. “He means he’s allowed to have a drink because it’s after eleven o’clock.”

“Aren’t you teaching him anything, James?”

“You said no new languages.”

“In plain English, gents. Are we having a drink?” 

“Can I have a Manhattan?” Izzy asks. He has been to the pictures again.

“You can have a ginger beer. James, does this place suit you or do you want to head back?”

Even though they are back on the comparatively stable pavement Robbie keeps hold of his arm.

“Can I have a Manhattan?”

“Get inside, the pair of you,” Robbie says. 

  
End

  
January 2018


End file.
